Bespoke Consulting

01 · Understand the scope

Scope the test menu the laboratory intends to offer and the monthly volume it implies, then propose a project plan with timelines and agree acceptance before any capital is committed.

02 · Implementation

Lab build-out, instrument finalisation, hiring core personnel, and a market-appropriate Dx menu.

03 · Post-project

Sales-team training, accreditation readiness, and bi-annual intervention for three years.

The order the decisions come in

An engagement starts with what the laboratory intends to report, not with what it intends to buy. Everything after that is downstream of it, and taking these out of order is how a laboratory ends up with an instrument that does not suit its menu.

• Scope: which genomics tests the laboratory wants to offer, across consumer and preventive reporting, inherited disease screening, and oncology germline, somatic and haemato-oncology.
• Volume: the monthly sample count that menu implies. This is the number the rest of the plan is built on, and it is the one most often assumed rather than worked out.
• Platform: chosen from the scope and the volume together. Sequencer, array or both, and at what throughput.
• Libraries and consumables: matched to the platform and to the menu, including what has to be imported and how often.
• Validation: assays and the analysis pipeline validated before the laboratory signs out a patient result.
• People: hiring and training the laboratory and reporting staff who will still be running it after we leave.

What the monthly volume decides

Volume is the number the rest of the plan is built on, and at the low end the honest answer is not to build. The first two thresholds below are advice against buying anything, which is why they are worth publishing.

• Under 50 samples a month: outsource. The fixed cost of running a laboratory does not clear at this volume, whatever the instrument.
• Around 50 a month: bring genetic counselling in-house first. It improves the report without needing capital equipment.
• Around 100 a month: prepare libraries in-house and keep sequencing outsourced. This is where consumable cost and turnaround start to pay back the bench and the training.
• Around 200 a month: a full laboratory set-up becomes defensible, instrument included.

The shape of a build-out

About twelve months from the first scoping conversation to informatics handover, then support after it. The bands below are the sequence rather than a guarantee: a laboratory that already has the space, the power and the approvals moves through the middle of this faster than one starting from an empty room.

• Month 1: scope, plan, quotes and a final timeline, and project acceptance before any capital is committed.
• Months 2 to 4: instrument finalisation, hiring core personnel, the diagnostic menu, the report format, and sales-team training.
• Months 5 to 6: lab build-out, quality parameters, report rollout, and the operational tweaks that always follow a first rollout.
• Months 6 to 9: in-house launch, assay and pipeline validation where it applies, and the first review of genomics reporting.
• Months 9 to 12: informatics handover, operational team training, and a review of everything handed over.
• Year 2 onward: annual maintenance, report upgrades, and bi-annual intervention for three years after launch.